YouLearn

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  Theoretical introduction for measurements problems

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  One problem from "Math through play"

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  Problem successfully solved! :)

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  "Math through play" puzzle selection: Chapter "Pyramid"

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  Multimeter puzzle

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  Adventure game for electrical engineering students

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  Skyscrapers puzzle

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  Logic puzzle

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  Recommended puzzles page

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  Channels page

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  Test selection

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  Problem solved! :)

Our inspiration

As parents, we noticed that it is increasingly difficult for today's generation to fit into traditional classrooms in which they mostly passively sit and listen to classes. We began to to study this problem and as a result we developed P.A.G.E. – an award-winning lightweight game engine that allows easy creation of online educational games without programming. Since then, over 60 games have been made with P.A.G.E. and many problem-solving competitions have been organized. In September 2019 we published "Math through play" – a free educational application for the third grade of primary school in Montenegro, which immediately became very popular among pupils.

From the first days of learning from home there has been a huge increase in the number of visits to all our educational games, which assured us that this is a great concept of learning, especially in times when the usual methods are not possible.

So, we decided to bring this to a whole new level and develop the YouLearn platform - a new interactive learning experience.

What is YouLearn

YouLearn can be easily described as "YouTube for learning", but with educational games instead of videos. It contains interactive lessons, problems and tests from various fields, suitable for all ages, which are publicly available to those who are learning, or who simply like to solve problems. Users can easily create new interactive learning experiences on their channels.

Educators can also create content that is available only to certain users, or those who have received a link or access code. In this way, they can organize tests and monitor the results of their students in real time. Such content can later be locked, or made publicly available.

As on the other content distribution platforms, it is possible to easily search and find content in accordance with the interests of users, keywords, as well as those that are most popular at the moment. It is also possible to browse the content by channels and see the history of previously visited contents.

How we built it

The YouLearn platform has been developed using the modern, future proof technologies. Adding new user interface languages is easy, so it can easily be made available worldwide.

The underlying P.A.G.E. engine is a base for YouLearn. It is a lightweight no‑programming JavaScript game engine that allows easy creation of online puzzle adventures and educational games. It is intended to be used by a wide audience. Games made in P.A.G.E. run flawlessly on all smart devices (mobile phones, tablets and computers) and operating systems. P.A.G.E. supports sprites, animations and sounds, but the most important is a library of predefined puzzle types, which can be used to simply make hundreds of problems.

The user interface was developed in Angular 9, as a robust, fast and responsive single-page application.

The RESTful back-end API was developed in PHP.

Challenges we ran into

The development of games and game engines, even lightweight ones ad P.A.G.E. is not an easy task. P.A.G.E. has been in development for many years. Since there are many different web browsers running on different devices of various screen sizes with very restrictive approach to security and performance, it was challenging to enable smooth sprite animations and even sounds in all those cases.

With P.A.G.E. it was possible to create YouLearn platform prototype in just a few days.

Accomplishments that we are proud of

The free educational application "Math through play" that we recently released for the third grade students of primary school in Montenegro immediately became very popular. Since the beginning of learning from home, 10 000 children in Montenegro have played „Math through play“. Having in mind that Montenegro is a very small country and the application is intended for the third grade students only, these are large numbers showing the huge potential of this approach to learning.

YouLearn would make it possible to elevate this idea to the world level. We are sure that our concept would be very popular, giving students and teachers around the world a whole new educational tool.

What we learned

Besides tech side, we learned a lot about the situation in school systems around the world, the challenges and opportunities and a way to use modern technologies to improve the state in which they are now.

What's next for YouLearn

The next step would be to evolve this prototype into fully functional application. The most important part to be developed is the GUI for creation of new games. This is a very complex task and it is essential in order to enable user-friendly creation of new games, so any teacher or parent will be able to create lessons, puzzles or tests for students of all ages.

Built With

• angular.js
• html
• javascript
• mysql
• page-game-engine
• php